Marking Pentecost and beginning a series on what it means to be the church, this message turns to Exodus 3 and the burning bush, where God sees the affliction of his enslaved people and acts to deliver them, connecting it to the racial injustice and protests of 2020.
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The concluding message in the "Poverty of Spirit" series by Johannes Metz, exploring how recognizing our human limitations becomes the doorway to encountering God, and how to respond to those decisive, awe-filled moments rather than grasping for control.
Listen & readContinuing the "Poverty of Spirit" series, this message opens with Matthew 6:25-34 on anxiety and explores the "shapes" of human poverty, especially our provisional nature and lack of control over past and future, drawing also on Colossians 4.
Listen & readContinuing the "Poverty of Spirit" series on Mother's Day, this message revisits the woman caught in adultery (John 8) as a model of poverty of spirit, then turns to Jesus's account of the final judgment in Matthew 25 to show how that posture works out in action.
Listen & readOpening with Psalm 103 and continuing the "Poverty of Spirit" series, this message examines John 8 and the woman caught in adultery, contrasting the Pharisees' use of the law of Moses as a power scheme with Jesus's response to human frailty and limitation.
Listen & readContinuing the meditation on poverty of spirit from Johannes Metz, this message centers on Philippians 2, exploring how the infinite God embraced full human frailty and limitation in Jesus, who emptied himself and took the form of a servant.
Listen & readPreached in the Easter season, this message reflects on human powerlessness and poverty of spirit, drawing on the Beatitudes and Jesus's temptation in the wilderness in Matthew 4, with help from the book "Poverty of Spirit."
Listen & readAn Easter sermon on the empty tomb (Luke 23-24) and Romans 5, 6, and 8, proclaiming that Christ's resurrection means believers will rise too, that God moves first to reconcile us "while we were yet sinners," and that the risen Jesus gathers the reconciled into the family of God.
Listen & readA Palm Sunday sermon on the triumphal entry (Luke 19), paired with Jesus' Nazareth manifesto (Luke 4), reflecting on uncontainable, genuine emotion toward Jesus and urging hearers to bring their authentic feelings, even anger, to God rather than settling into self-satisfied complacency.
Listen & readA Lenten sermon on the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4), preached during the early pandemic shutdown, showing how Jesus exposes the "wells" we return to for satisfaction, offers living water and salvation, and empowers her to worship in spirit and truth and become an evangelist.
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